Report: The Economics of Net Promoter

We just published a Temkin Group report, The Economics of Net Promoter, which examines the link between NPS and loyalty across 19 industries. Here’s the executive summary:

Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a popular metric, but how does it relate to loyalty? We analyzed responses from thousands of consumers and examined the connection between NPS and three areas of loyalty: likelihood to repurchase, likelihood to forgive, and the actual number of times they recommend a company. Compared to detractors, promoters are almost six times as likely to forgive, are more than five times as likely to repurchase, and are more than twice as likely as detractors to actually recommend a company. Examining the data, we also found that consumers who gave a score between 0 and 4 have particularly low levels of loyalty. The analysis examines 19 industries: airlines, appliance makers, auto dealers, banks, car rental agencies, computer makers, credit card issuers, fast food chains, grocery chains, health plans, hotel chains, insurance carriers, Internet service providers, investment firms, parcel delivery services, retailers, software firms, TV service providers, and wireless carriers. Promoters who are likely to repurchase range from 87% for grocery chains to 73% for TV service providers, those who are likely to forgive range from 72% for rental car agencies to 59% for TV service providers, and those who actually recommended a company range from 80% for retailers to 47% for parcel delivery services.

Download report for $295 (includes Excel dataset)

Here’s the first figure from the report. It has a total of 43 figures that include specific graphics for each of the 19 industries in the study.

Here’s an excerpt from the first section that examines the data cross all industries:

To understand how NPS relates to customer loyalty, we examined NPS scores for companies across 19 industries based on feedback from 10,000 U.S. consumers. The analysis covers more than 95,000 pieces of feedback from consumers about those companies. Examining three areas of loyalty across industries, looking at promoters versus detractors, we found that:

• Promoters are almost six times as likely to forgive. We asked consumers about their likelihood to forgive a company if it delivered a bad experience and found that 64% of promoters are likely to forgive compared with 11% of detractors.
• Promoters are more than five times as likely to repurchase. We asked consumers about their likelihood to make additional purchases from a company and found that 81% of promoters are likely to repurchase compared with 16% of detractors.
• Promoters are more than twice as likely as detractors to actually recommend. In a separate study of 5,000 U.S. consumers, we asked consumers how many times they actually recommended each company. It turns out that 64% of promoters have recommended the company compared with 24% of detractors.

We also examined the level of loyalty across each response on the NPS scale between 0 and 10. This analysis shows that:

• Super detractors are much less loyal. Forgiveness and repurchase loyalty stay at a consistent low level between 0 and 4 on the scale. Actual recommendations begin to increase after 5.
• Midpoint attracts low recommenders. When we examine the actual quantity of recommendations across the NPS scale it turns out that there’s significant drop in recommendations at the midpoint of the scale, when 5 is selected.
• Text anchors attract responses. We analyzed the volume of responses across the 11 point scale. Consumers appear to select the three responses with text anchors at a disproportionately high rate: “0,” “5,” and “10.”

Download report for $295 (includes Excel dataset)

The Excel file provides all of the data from the 43 figures.

Note: See our report, Net Promoter Score Benchmark Study, 2012 and the post 9 Recommendations For Net Promoter Score along with all of my other posts about NPS.

The bottom line: Promoters are more loyal than detractors.

P.S. Net Promoter Score, Net Promoter, and NPS are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Satmetrix Systems, and Fred Reichheld.

Report: The State of Customer Experience Management, 2013

We just published a Temkin Group report, The State of CX Management, 2013. The research shows where large companies are along their customer experience journeys. Here’s the executive summary:

We surveyed more than 200 large companies and found an abundance of Customer Experience (CX) ambition and activity. Most companies have a CX executive leading the charge, significant CX activities being coordinated by a central team, and a staff of six to 10 full-time CX professionals. Using Temkin Group’s CX competency assessment, we found that only six percent of companies have reached the highest two levels of customer experience maturity as firms struggle the most to master Employee Engagement and Compelling Brand Values. When compared with CX Laggards, CX Leaders have stronger financial results, more CX ambition, more CX leadership, and they are more successful with their employee engagement efforts. Executives in companies with stronger CX competencies also focus more on delighting customers and less on cutting costs.

Download report for $195

Here are some of the findings from the research:

• While only eight percent of companies believe that they are leading their industries in CX today, 62% have goals to be the best within three years
• Sixty-one percent of respondents have a senior executive in charge of the company’s overall CX efforts and 71%  have a centralized CX group
• The median firm in our study has six to 10 full time CX employees
• Seven out of ten respondents identified “other competing priorities” as a significant obstacle to their CX efforts
• Only six percent of the companies that completed our CX Competency and Maturity Assessment have made it to the top two levels of maturity, Align and Embed
• We compared companies with leading CX efforts with other firms and found that they have better financial performance, more centralized CX activities, better employee engagement, stronger employee engagement, and more management attention to corporate culture

Download report for $195

The bottom line: Most companies remain in the early stages of CX maturity

Report: Employee Engagement Case Studies: Five I’s in Practice

We just published a Temkin Group report, Employee Engagement Case Studies: Five I’s in Practice. It’s a deep dive into how companies are systematically improving employee engagement. Here’s the executive summary:

Engaged employees create engaged customers, kicking off what Temkin Group describes as a virtuous cycle. More and more organizations are paying attention to the connection between employee engagement and customer experience through a variety of efforts spanning five areas that we call that Five I’s of Employee Engagement: Inform, Inspire, Instruct, Involve and Incent. We’ve compiled case studies of three organizations that are engaging employees and driving results: BMO Financial, Hampton brand, and Safelite AutoGlass.

Download report for $195

Here is an overview of how the three companies we examine are addressing the FIve I’s of Employee Engagement:

Download report for $195

The bottom line: Employee engagement is worth the effort of learning best practices

Report: Social Media Benchmark, 2013

We just published a Temkin Group report, Social Media Benchmark, 2013. This data snapshot examines how often consumers use social media on their computers and mobile phones.

In January 2013 we surveyed 10,000 U.S. consumers about their social media use patterns and compared the results to data that we collected in January 2012. This analysis examines the use of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and third-party rating sites. This report also examines how the data varies by type of mobile phone and identifies consumers’ preferred communication channels. The analysis breaks down the data by age group.

Download report for $195

The first figure in the report (out of 10 total data graphics) shows the change in social media use between 2012 and 2013, highlights a reduction in active Facebook usage especially by younger consumers.

Here are some interesting factoids about social media and mobile usage in the U.S.:

• The percentage of active Facebook users has declined for consumers younger than 55, but it’s on the rise for older consumers.
• One-quarter of consumers use their mobile phones to access Facebook daily while 10% access Twitter, 8% access Google+, and 6% access LinkedIn that frequently.
• More than 90% of  consumers under the age of 45 who use LinkedIn, Google+, and third party rating sites daily on their computers are also doing so on their mobile devices.
• iPhones and Android phones dominate younger consumers while Blackberry’s sweet spot is with 35- to 54-year-olds. Windows Mobile has only 2% of the market, but its share is consistent across age groups
• iPhone users are the most likely to access Facebook and Twitter daily while Blackberry users are the most likely to access Google+, LinkedIn, and third party rating sites.
• Young consumers prefer to connect with friends via text message, but that preference has declined since 2012. Older consumers prefer to make calls on landlines while those in their 40s and 50s prefer to talk on their cell phones

Download report for $195

The bottom line: Mobile is a big catalyst for social media

 

Report: Best Practices in B2B Customer Experience

We just published a Temkin Group report, Best Practices in B2B Customer Experience. Here’s the executive summary:

Customer experience is gaining more attention within business-to-business (B2B) organizations. Rightfully so—customer experience drives loyalty with business customers. At the same time, clients and prospects, who increasingly compare business interactions with their personal consumer experiences, are raising the expectations of B2B relationships. While our research has shown that most B2Bs are still mastering the basics, our interviews with 28 companies uncovered best practices for building a more client-oriented mindset through closed-loop voice of the customer programs, customer journey maps, and virtual client advisory boards. Using the customer insights they collect, forward-thinking B2B organizations are becoming more client-centric in how they develop new business, create account plans, and proactively provide support (or intervene when service breakdowns occur). To sustain superior customer experience, B2B firms must master four competencies: Purposeful Leadership, Compelling Brand Values, Employee Engagement, and Customer Connectedness.

Download report for $195

The report identifies many best practices across two areas:

• Building a client-oriented mindset. Organizations have a natural tendency to operate from an internal perspective, focusing on the needs of their functional silos more than on their clients. To offset this tendency, B2B firms need to build repeatable and systematic processes for gathering, analyzing, and taking action on customer insights. The report identifies best practices in the following areas:
  • Develop Closed-Loop Voice of the Client (VoC) Programs. Having a reliable flow of customer insights across the organization is critical to driving customer-centric actions.
  • Use Journey Maps to Better Understand Clients’ Needs. To better understand how clients see their experiences, B2B organizations can use a tool known as customer journey mapping.
  • Tap Into Virtual Client Advisory Boards. Client advisory boards (CAB) and councils provide the opportunity to acquire more insight into customer needs and expectations.
• Building client-centric relationship management. Today, account management functions tend to be oriented around sales generation and firefighting. To build stronger, longer-term ties with clients, Temkin Group expects that B2B firms will head towards a more client-centric model of account management that uses client insights throughout the relationship management continuum. The report identifies best practices in the following areas:
  • Account-Level Experience Reporting. To acquire, retain, and grow B2B relationships, account managers need to understand what’s working and not working for each of their clients.
  • Insightful Business Development. B2B organizations that gather and use the right customer insights during this early stage will create a differentiated experience from the start of the relationship
  • Collaborative Account Planning. By taking a structured and collaborative approach to developing in-depth account plans, companies can tap into their enterprise knowledge.
  • Proactive Intervention and Support. B2B organizations need to use customer insights and feedback from account managers to intervene in service experiences gone wrong as quickly as possible with well-defined, robust recovery procedures.

The report provides a plethora of specific practices in these areas from companies such as Becker and Poliakoff, CDW, Cisco, Citrix, Dell, Enterasys, Equinix, Genworth Financial, Lithium, Lynden, Philadelphia Insurance Companies, Oracle, Salesforce.com, SanDisk, Stream Global, Verint, and VMware.

Download report for $195

The bottom line: B2B companies need more customer-centric enterprise relationships

 

Report: Media Use Benchmark, 2013

We just published a Temkin Group report, Media Use Benchmark, 2013. This data snapshot examines the time spent by U.S. consumers using different media sources and the changes from 2012.

In January 2013 we surveyed 10,000 U.S. consumers about their media use patterns and compared the results to data that we collected in January 2012. The analysis examines internet usage (at home and at work), reading of books and news (online and offline), TV watching, radio listening, and mobile activity. The data snapshot breaks down the data by age, ethnicity, income, and geographic region.

Download report for $195

The first figure in the report (out of 14 total data graphics) shows the overall usage levels in the U.S. for different media activities:

Here are some interesting factoids about media usage in the U.S.:

• Ninety-eight percent of consumers go online at home, 60% do it at least three hours per day
• Fifty-seven percent of consumers use their mobile phone for going online or using an app, 16% do it at least three hours per day
• Sixty-five to 74-year-olds watch the most TV (4.2 hours per day), 18- to 24-year-olds watch the least (3.6 hours per day)
• All ages of consumers spend more time reading paper books than online books, but the gap is narrower with younger consumers
• Consumers making less than $25,000 per year watch 4.5 hours per day of TV, those making $100,000 or more watch less than 3.4 hours
• Thirty-nine percent of consumers making less than $25,000 per year use their mobile phone for going online or using an app, compared with more than 60% of those who earn $75,000 or more
• The hours that consumers spend watching TV goes down with increasing educational levels
• Asians spend twice as much time reading online books as do Caucasians
• African-Americans watch the most TV per day
• Fifty-four precent of consumers in the South use their mobile phone for going online or using an app, compared with 49% of those in the Midwest

Download report for $195

The bottom line: It’s good to keep track of your customers’ media habits

Report: 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings

We published the 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings. The report analyzes feedback from 10,000 U.S. consumers to rate 246 organizations across 19 industries. Congratulations to the top firms in this year’s ratings: Publix, Trader Joe’s, Aldi, Chick-fil-A, Amazon.com, and Sam’s Club.

Download report for FREE

You can also download the data for $395.

The Temkin Experience Ratings are based on evaluating three elements of experience:

1. Functional: How well do experiences meet customers’ needs?
2. Accessible: How easy is it for customers to do what they want to do?
3. Emotional: How do customers feel about the experiences?

Here are the top and bottom companies in the ratings:

Here’s how the industries compare with each other:

(NOTE: We have published posts on the detailed results for all 19 industries)

Here are the companies that are leaders and laggards across the 19 industries:

In this year’s ratings, 37% of companies earned “good” or “excellent” scores, while 28% are rated as “poor” or ”very poor.” Companies with at least a “good” rating grew by nine-percentage points since 2012 and by 21-points since 2011. Of the 203 companies that are included in both the 2012 and 2013 Temkin Experience Ratings, 57% firms had at least a modest increase. The companies that made the largest improvement over 2012 are Citibank, TriCare, TD Ameritrade, Office Depot, EarthLink, Hardees, and Regions Bank.

Download report for FREE

Get the Data

Do you want to see all of the data? You can purchase an excel spreadsheet for $395…

To view all of our ratings (experience, loyalty, trust, forgiveness, customer service, and web experience), visit the Temkin Ratings website…

The bottom line: Customer experience is improving, but there’s still a long way to go

Report: CX Plans and Expectations for 2013

We just published a Temkin Group data snapshot, CX Plans and Expectations for 2013. Here’s the executive summary:

In the fourth quarter of 2012, Temkin Group surveyed 178 respondents from companies with $500 million or more in annual revenues about their customer experience results in the past year and their plans for 2013 and beyond. The results from that survey are compared with results of a similar survey we completed in the same timeframe in 2010 and 2011. The results highlight a continued strong ambition and commitment to customer experience and an increase in customer experience management activities in 2013.

Download report for $195

This data snapshot contains 19 data rich charts is an update to the report we published last year. Here are some of the interesting datapoints:

• Fifty-three percent of large companies have the goal to deliver the best customer experience in their industry within three years
• Seventy-seven percent of large companies plan to spend more on customer experience in 2013 than they did in 2012.
• Over half of large companies have at least six full-time customer experience professionals
• Sixty-four percent of large companies think that their phone agent experiences are good or excellent, but only 18% feel that way about their cross-channel experiences and 27% feel that way about their mobile experiences.
• Seventy-eight percent of large companies plan to put more effort on their web experience in 2013 and 68% plan to focus more on their mobile experience.
• Thirty percent of respondents from companies with at least $500 million in annual revenues plan to increase spending on text analytics compared with only 4% that expect to decrease spending in that area. Next on the list with positive spending momentum is voice of the customer software.

Download report for $195

The bottom line: CX efforts are n the rise.

P.S. Here are a listing of the 19 charts:

Report: The State of the CX Profession, 2013

We just published a Temkin Group report, The State of the CX Profession, 2013. Here’s the executive summary:

We surveyed 283 customer experience professionals and compared their answers to our data from last year. The vast majority of respondents believe that CX is a great profession to be in, and most remain satisfied with their individual roles. As a result, fewer of them plan to look for a new job this year. Most respondents believe that their efforts have had a positive impact and say that their organization expects to increase CX spending and headcount in 2013. The top areas of focus for interactions are web experience and mobile experience while CX measurements and metrics customer insights, and customer-centric culture are the CX efforts that are gaining the most momentum. We examined the difference in responses between CX professionals at larger and smaller companies and found that large companies are more interested in cross-channel interactions and text analytics. We also compared responses from executives and non-executives which shows that executives see more importance in culture, and that non-executives are more likely to look for new job.

Download report for $195

This report is an update to the report we published last year. Here are some of the interesting datapoints:

• Forty-nine percent of CX pros think their efforts had a positive impact in 2012 and 75% expect to have a positive impact in 2013.
• Ninety-eight percent of CX pros think they are in a great profession.
• Ninety-one percent of CX pros are satisfied with the content of their jobs, but only 66% are satisfied with opportunities for advancement.
• Thirty-eight percent of CX pros are likely to look for a new job (outside their company), which is down from 41% last year.
• Voice of the customer programs remains the activity in which CX pros are most actively involved. The area of focus with the largest change since last year is “process analysis and redesign, where 57% of CX pros are involved this year versus 52% last year.
• The percentage of CX pros who agree that their customer experience efforts have all of the resources, skills, and leadership they need has dropped from 46% to 41%.
• Fifty-four percent of CX pros expect their company to spend more on CX in 2013 than it did in 2012, compared with 53% last year.
• Forty-six percent of CX pros expect their firm to expand their full-time CX staff, up from 40% last year.
• At the top of the list of vendors they expect to increase spending on are text analytics and voice of the customer software vendors, while market research firms are at the bottom
• The top interaction channel to focus on for improvements in 2013 is the Web, followed by mobile.
• CX pros at companies with 1,000 or more employees are more satisfied than those from smaller organizations. At the same time, 48% of CX pros a larger organizations are likely to look for a new job outside their company in 2013 compared with 39% of those from smaller firms.
• Seventy-eight percent of CX executives see networking as a key professional development goal compared with 71% of non-execs.
• Sixty-two percent of CX non-execs see training as a key professional development goal compared with 47% of execs.

Download report for $195

The bottom line: The CX profession continues to thrive

Report: Employee Engagement Benchmark Study, 2013

We just published a Temkin Group report, Employee Engagement Benchmark Study, 2013 that updates a similar study we completed last year. Here’s the executive summary:

Using the Temkin Employee Engagement Index, we analyzed employee engagement across more than 2,400 U.S. employees. Employee engagement has increased over last year. Companies that outperform their peers in financial performance and customer experience have considerably more engaged workforces. Why does that matter? Because highly engaged employees try harder, recommend the company, help others, and take less sick time. It turns out that services industries have the most engaged employees while the retail sector has the fewest. We also found that highly engaged employees tend to be: front-line employees, high-income earners, male, African-American, and happy. Since engaged employees are such a valuable asset, we recommend that companies focus on this area using our Five I’s of Employee Engagement: Inform, Inspire, Instruct, Involve, and Incent.

Download report for $195

Here are some of the findings from the study:

• Engaged employees are more than twice as likely to stay late at work if something needs to be done, help someone at work even if they’re not asked, and do something that is good for the company even if it’s not expected of them.
• Engaged employees are almost three times as likely to make recommendations about an improvement and more than six times as likely to recommend that a friend or relative apply for a job.
• Fifty-seven percent of U.S. employees are moderately or highly engaged, an increase from 47% that we found last year.
• Three-quarters of employees in companies with significantly above average financial performance are moderately or highly engaged, compared with less than half of firms with subpar financial results.
• Nearly twice as many employees at companies with subpar customer experience are looking for a job compared with employees at companies with good customer experience.
• Professional services and construction companies have the highest level of employee engagement, while travel and retail firms have the lowest.
• Sixty percent of the workforce at companies with 100 or fewer employees are moderately or highly engaged, compared with only 46% at companies with 10,000 or more employees.
• Seventy-five percent of senior executives are moderately or highly engaged, compared with only 46% of individual contributors.
• The most engaged employees tend to be older, male, college educated, and African-American.
• The most engaged employees tend to be financially secure, healthy, physically fit, and typically happy.

Download report for $195

The bottom line: It’s time to focus on engaging your employees

P.S. Check out these recent related reports: The Five I’s of Employee Engagement and CX Needs More HR Focus on Employee Engagement

Report: The Four Customer Experience Core Competencies

Temkin Group just published an update to the report that defines one of our fundamental frameworks, The Four Customer Experience Core Competencies. This report lays out the building blocks for customer experience success. This topic is so important that we’re giving this report away for free. Here’s the executive summary:

Research shows that customer experience is highly correlated with loyalty. While any company can improve portions of its customer experience, it takes more than a few superficial changes to create lasting differentiation. Organizations that want to become customer experience leaders need to master four customer experience competencies: Purposeful Leadership, Employee Engagement, Compelling Brand Values, and Customer Connectedness. To gauge your progress, actively use Temkin Group’s Customer Experience Competency and Maturity Assessment. This assessment will identify areas of strength and weakness in your CX efforts as well as identify your progress along six stages of CX maturity: Ignore  Explore, Mobilize, Operationalize, Align, and Embed.

Download report for FREE

Here’s how I describe the four CX Competencies:

Download report for FREE

The bottom line: It’s time to improve your CX competencies

 

Report: Lessons in CX Excellence

We just published a Temkin Group report, Lessons in CX Excellence. This 127 page report provides a rich set of best practices and a glimpse into the customer experience efforts of 11 companies that were finalists in Temkin Group’s 2012 Customer Experience Excellence Awards. Here’s the executive summary:

The following 11 organizations are finalists in Temkin Group’s 2012 Customer Experience Excellence Awards: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Bombardier Aerospace, Citrix, EMC, Fidelity Investments, JetBlue Airways, Microsoft, Oklahoma City Thunder, Oracle, Safelite AutoGlass, and Sovereign Assurance NZ. This document provides highlights of their customer experience efforts and best practices across the four customer experience competencies: Purposeful leadership, compelling brand values, employee engagement,  and customer connectedness. The report also includes the finalists’ detailed nomination forms.

Download report for $195

Here are excerpts of our description from each of the finalists:

• In just 17 months, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan assembled its customer experience team and leveraged a variety of insights and data to devise a comprehensive strategy to “Find and Fix” near-term opportunities and “Transform” the organization to be customer-centric at its core.
• Bombardier Aerospace drives continuous improvement through its multi-faceted Amazing Customer Experience (ACE) initiative. Customer feedback is essential to ACE and is gathered through a variety of channels including surveys, customer forums, and Bombardier’s Executive Listening Program.
• Citrix places an emphasis on giving customers a voice in its product roadmap and building a user-centered culture in order to continuously improve its products, services, and experiences. Through the Design Matters initiative, Citrix helps its employees rethink core business processes with a focus on customer needs.
• EMC has a Total Customer Experience (TCE) program with a mission to enable business growth through improvements based on a customer-focused, data-driven strategy. The program provides ways for customers, partners, and EMC field personnel to provide feedback on their experiences, and measures customer quality in every interaction.
• Founded on the core value “The Customer Is Always First,” Fidelity Investments has a well-established, well-rounded program that delivers enterprise-wide results. The program is comprised of four integrated elements: Voice of Customer & Associate, End-to-End Process Improvement, Culture & Communications, and Measurement & Rewards.
• The Customer Insight (CI) team at JetBlue Airways provides the business with a multi-faceted view of its customers through feedback from surveys, text analytics, social media monitoring, and third party benchmarking. The CI team also has a program in place to address all unsolicited customer feedback that is received regardless of source through its Customer Retention Program.
• Microsoft believes that the better it is at building a culture of accountability, listening and responding to customers, simplifying offerings, and innovating based on customer feedback, the stronger its Customer and Partner Experience (CPE) will be.
• “Create Repeat Guests Profitably” is the mission of the Guest Relations team of the Oklahoma City Thunder. The team uses various fan feedback platforms to gather feedback including email, text message, telephone, written submissions, and social media, all of which are promoted on the team’s website and during in-game announcements.
• Oracle drives consistent customer experience activities across all regions and lines of business through a structured framework and standardized approach to monitoring the customer experience: Listen, Respond, Collaborate for Customer Success. The portfolio of feedback tools includes transactional and product surveys, relationship surveys, customer advisory boards, user experience labs, and independent user groups.
• On the company’s path back from bankruptcy, Safelite AutoGlass CEO Tom Feeney set a goal in 2008 to double business in four years by 1) putting Safelite’s people first by focusing on talent development and employee engagement and 2) going above and beyond to delight every customer.
• Sovereign Assurance of New Zealand’s strategy is to create customer engagement and advocacy through effortless experiences, with a program of initiatives around four key levers: customers front and center, stickier relationships, maximize touch points, and focus on value.

Download report for $195

The bottom line: There’s a lot to learn from these excellent CX efforts

Report: What Happens After A Good or Bad Experience?

We just published a Temkin Group report, What Happens After A Good or Bad Experience? This large-scale consumer study uncovers negatively biased feedback and significant upside from good service recovery. Here’s the executive summary:

We asked 5,000 U.S. consumers about their experiences with 179 companies across 19 industries. More than 60% who had a bad experience with a fast food chain, credit card issuer, rental car agency, or hotel cut back on their spending, and many stopped completely. But service recovery helps. For every level of improvement in how they responded to a bad experience, companies were rewarded with more sales. Unfortunately, firms aren’t very good at service recovery, especially banks and credit card issuers. TV service providers delivered the greatest number of bad experiences while grocery chains had the fewest. At a company level, ING Direct and Holiday Inn had the lowest number of bad experiences, while QVC and Best Buy had the highest. We also examined how consumers share their good and bad experiences, across age groups and income levels, and compared results from last year. This analysis uncovered a negative bias in how consumers give feedback. Motel 6, ING Direct, Albertsons, and RadioShack have the most negative bias in the feedback they get directly from customers; Cox Communications and Symantec have the most negative bias in feedback on Facebook; and Verizon and GE face the most negative bias on Twitter.

Download report for $195

The report has 20 graphics full of data on consumer behavior and company ratings. It starts by looking at the prevalence of bad experiences. It turns out that 20% of consumers have had a bad experience with a TV service provider while only 5% have had a bad experience with a grocery store.

One of the streams of analysis looks at how consumers give feedback. As you can see, companies are more likely to hear about bad experiences than good experiences.

Here are some of the other findings in the research:

• ING Direct (2%), Holiday Inn Express (2%) Whole Foods (3%) and Holiday Inn (3%) had the fewest occurrences of bad experience, while Best Buy (29%), QVC (29%), Gap (28%), and eBay (26%) had the most.
• After a bad experience consumers were most likely to completely stop spending with rental car agencies (40%), credit card issuers (39%), computer makers (35%), and auto dealers (35%), but least likely to stop spending with retailers (9%) and Internet service providers (10%).
• When companies responded very poorly after a bad experience, 47% of consumers stopped spending completely with the company. When they had a very good response, only 6% stopped spending and 37% increased their spending.
• Retailers (46%) most often recovered well from a bad experience while Internet service providers (15%) and health plans (15%) were the worst at recovering.
• 38% of consumers gave feedback directly to the company after a very bad experience, but only 31% gave feedback after a very good experience.
• 14% of consumers gave feedback on a rating site like Yelp after both a very good or a very bad experience.
• The use of twitter to communicate about a very bad experience has grown from 4% to 9% of consumers over the last year.
• 33% of 18- to 24-year-olds have posted about a good experience on Facebook, compared with only 5% of those who are 65 and older.
• 18% of 18- to 24-year-olds have tweeted about a good experience, compared with only about 1% of those who are 55 and older.
• 17% of consumers who earn $100K or more have tweeted about a bad experience, compared with only 7% of those who earn less than $50K.
• Given their customer demographics, Motel 6, ING Direct, Albertsons, and RadioShack are the most likely to receive direct customer feedback that is negatively biased while Cablevision, Avis, Nissan dealers, and Dodge dealers are the most likely to receive positively biased feedback.
• Given their customer demographics, Cox Communications, Symantec, ING Direct, and TracFone are the most likely to have negatively biased comments on Facebook, while Cablevision, AOL, Kaiser Permanente, and Holiday Inn are the most likely to have positively biased comments.
• Given their customer demographics, Verizon and GE are the most likely to have negatively biased comments on Twitter, while Avis and Edward Jones are most likely to have positively biased tweets.

Download report for $195

The bottom line: Customer feedback is an under utilized asset.

Report: The State of CX Metrics, 2012

We just published a Temkin Group report, The State of CX Metrics, 2012. This study of 200+ large companies shows limited improvement since last year. Here’s the executive summary:

Companies with stronger CX metrics programs are more likely to be customer experience leaders and to outperform the business results of their competitors. We asked over 200 large companies about their use of customer experience (CX) metrics and found that while these efforts are seen as important, only 11% of respondents received “good” ratings. Temkin Group’s assessment of CX metrics examines four areas: consistent (does the company use common CX metrics across the organization), impactful (do important decisions consider the CX metrics), integrated (are trade-offs made between CX and financial metrics), and continuous (do leaders regularly examine the CX metrics). Unfortunately, companies have not shown an improvement in our assessment since last year. The research also shows that the likelihood to recommend and ease of doing business metrics are on the rise, but companies do a particularly poor job of measuring non-customers (non-buyers and defectors), emotional response of customers, and mobile and cross-channel interactions. To fully measure customer experience, companies need to develop measurements that link behaviors, attitudes, perceptions, and interactions.

Download report for $195

Using our CX results from our CX metrics assessment, we compared companies with strong CX metrics efforts to other companies and found that the stronger programs have much better CX results.

We examined the CX metrics that companies are using and how that’s changed over the previous year. Here are the top seven (out of the 12 we examined).

The research has 17 figures examining the activities and effectiveness of CX metrics efforts. Here are a few of the additional findings:

• Only 11% of respondents think that their company mostly integrates CX and financial metrics, and it’s down from 13% in 2011. Also, only 35% of companies consider CX metrics in many of their important decisions.
• About 40% of executive teams review CX metrics at least monthly, which is about the level we found last year.
• Fifty percent of companies use common metrics across most of their company, an increase from 43% last year.
• Over half of companies feel good about their measurements of phone and online experiences, but only about one-quarter of them feel that way about measuring mobile and cross channel experiences.

Download report for $195

The bottom line: Don’t just measure CX, use the metrics to run your business

Report: The Five I’s of Employee Engagement

We just published a Temkin Group report, The Five I’s of Employee Engagement. While previous Temkin Group research found a strong connection between employee engagement and both productivity and customer experience, only 35% of large firms’ employee engagement efforts received strong ratings. Here’s the executive summary:

Despite the compelling upside to employee engagement, many companies neglect this key area, leaving employees much less than fully engaged. Our research uncovered 25 best practices across what we call the Five I’s of Employee Engagement: Inform, Inspire, Instruct, Involve, and Incent. Among these practices are Symantec’s Customer First News, an online customer experience update “broadcast” for employees, Sprint’s “day in the life of the frontline” experience bringing senior leaders together with call center and retail employees in their locations, Disney Store’s e-learning modules that develop both retail and entertainment skills in cast members, Fidelity Investments’ Voice of the Customer Ambassador program, and BKD’s Hi5 peer recognition campaign. CX professionals cannot drive employee engagement on their own; it requires support from across the organization. We’ve identified some areas for CX to start collaborating with HR.

Download report for $195

Based on interviews with over 20 companies, this report identifies 25 best practices and highlights more than 60 examples of ways in which companies are engaging employees across the Five I’s. There are 13 exhibits providing additional information on a number of the leading practices highlighted in the report.

Here are the 25 best practices across the Five Is of Employee Engagement:

Aimee Lucas, Customer Experience Analyst at Temkin Group, has prepared a brief introduction to the research and findings that you can view:

Download report for $195

The bottom line: The 5Is can improve your customer experience and business results